Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Ebay listing that made me chuckle
- Thread starter Alex_K
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
From Russian tech forum where I live mostly 
.
Little description https://linuxdevices.org/cell-based-coprocessor-card-runs-linux/
.
FedEx DHL MERCURY computer systems INC CANADA ICES/NMB-003 90days warranty #A | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for FedEx DHL MERCURY computer systems INC CANADA ICES/NMB-003 90days warranty #A at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
This seller always sell at high price. He buy everything around Montreal (Canada) then resell on ebay. That price for a smashed G5 is a bit much imo. Shipping is free tho.
Everytime I see a damaged G5 or another yt video of G5 pc case conversion, I’m guilty of rejoicing (meaning both of my G5 raise in value). I also got my quad for 300$ . I should get an owc box just in case, my 2004 is still my daily G5. But yes prices have skyrocketed lately.
I've talked to this seller a bit, it seems like if you make an offer you can work his prices down a bit and communicate. Some of his base prices are quite high though, especially when most of his inventory seems to be from the 2006-07 era.
Yes of course, people gutting G5 to make a windows box is always sad to see.
I bought my Quad from him. It was non functional and he asked 600$ for it. Since I’m in Quebec city ( 200km away) he made me a special offer (300$). He dont know a lot about G5. He thought the machine had a logic board issue, but in the end the lcs was simply clogged. Usualy he sell functioning quad for 1000$.
I would love to buy an Quad but his over 1000$ ad on ebay really made me chuckle, but some brazilian are selling an Quad with original box and items for almost 1450$ and he won't sell it for a foreseeable future.
Really? By your posts I thought that you are russian, but okCan you plz drop me a link? Just curious.
Computador Apple Power Mac G5 2.5ghz Quad Colecionador - R$ 6.999
Apple Power Mac G5 2.5GHz QuadComputador de uso pessoal que sempre foi meu desde zero. Pouquíssimo uso.Ele é um modelo raro que marca o fim da era Power Pc da Apple onde após esse houve a transição para processadores Intel.Funcionando tudo perfeitamente, estética perfeita sem nenhum...
produto.mercadolivre.com.br
I am
. About half of that anouncement easily readable due to English computer terms .I am actually entertaining offers for my G5 which is in great condition. I simply am downsizing most of my Apple macs currently as i don't need them anymore.
From Russian tech forum where I live mostly
Little description https://linuxdevices.org/cell-based-coprocessor-card-runs-linux/FedEx DHL MERCURY computer systems INC CANADA ICES/NMB-003 90days warranty #A | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for FedEx DHL MERCURY computer systems INC CANADA ICES/NMB-003 90days warranty #A at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!www.ebay.com
That's fascinating. It's a Cell processor card. It's hard to value because it's so esoteric. I remember reading about the Cell back when the PlayStation 3 came out; Sony and Toshiba had high hopes for it. The early versions of the PlayStation 3 officially supported a version of Linux, but sadly Sony removed that option with a firmware update around 2010 or so.
My hunch is that this card would do absolutely nothing unless you wrote a bunch of custom software for it yourself. That was the key problem with the Cell in general. Sony just seemed to dump it on the market and say "there you go" instead of coming up with a development framework that would compile code to exploit the Cell's strengths. It took ages for games developers to start pushing the Cell, albeit that on the positive side the system aged well (it had a terrible first few years but then seemed to go up a notch circa 2010 or so).
The Cell itself combined a PowerPC core with a bunch of eight "synergistic processing units", although one was disabled as a yield-improving measure and one ran the PS3's main menu. From what I remember the original plan was that the SPUs would do the work of a GPU, making the Cell an early system-on-a-chip, but it was overkill for televisions and underpowered for a games console, so the end result was that the PS3 ended up with a discrete GPU plus a bunch of SPUs that sat idle most of the time because developers found it hard to exploit them, breathe in.
There are rumours that Apple considered the Cell as a PowerPC replacement in the event that Intel for some reason Intel turned them down:
Apple would have transitioned to the Cell processor had it stayed with PowerPC, but too expensive - 9to5Mac
CNET, on the fourth anniversary of the switch from PowerPC to Intel, interviewed an ex-IBMer who had been familiar with...
9to5mac.com
It would probably have been a disaster unless Apple came up with the most incredible development framework. But then again one of the big problems with the PS3 was an inadequately small memory pool; in a Cell-powered Power Macintosh that would have been less of an issue.
In contrast the PS4 and PS5 use x86. As a consequence it's surprisingly difficult to play PS3 games nowadays unless you have an actual PS3, because it's weird enough that the PS4 and PS5 can't simply translate the code but not old enough that they can just brute-force emulate it.
I remember reading somewhere that the PS3 was excellent at ripping CDs and encoding MP3s because the built-in MP3 encoder was one of the few early applications that actually used the SPUs, because it was written by Sony. I wonder if it would have been good at cryptocurrency?
The problem with that was - Linux was sort of virtualised on a PS3 (as in: running on top of a hypervisor) and didn't get full access to the PS3's hardware. And 256 MB RAM didn't exactly cut it.
Oh yeah, let's repurpose thousands of discarded PS3 into dedicated mining rigs
Yes, I just need to figure out a price for it. I have seen very few quads on ebay lately.. though, as we get further into 2020's, powerpc macs are going to be rare to find.
I don't know if this listing is still up, but I saved this image from it a few months ago.
Horribly cropped here, the funny part is that the same image with the background intact was also included in the listing. Description said something like "I now sell my Fleet of unknown condition iMac." and it was about $150. Just an odd one.
Horribly cropped here, the funny part is that the same image with the background intact was also included in the listing. Description said something like "I now sell my Fleet of unknown condition iMac." and it was about $150. Just an odd one.
The beauties of eBay.
I saw someone selling their iBook G4 as a 'MacBook Air G4' recently.
I see people listing "Mac Pro G5" for sale sometimes, which while not as bad it makes me wonder if these people even look up their items before listing. Sometimes I will even see the listing title say iBook or PowerBook but in the description they call it a MacBook, contradicting themselves. I also see some listings refer to the screen size of these as 13.3", which no PPC Mac ever shipped with. Again it really makes me think that people just don't research.
That's surprisingly common. I assume it's a combination of the similar case, and the fact that I suppose technically when the G5 was new it was widely advertised as the professional Macintosh, and also because eBay sellers are just shovelling out loads of crap. Here's an example in the UK:
apple mac pro g5 A1093 EMC:2020 | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for apple mac pro g5 A1093 EMC:2020 at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!
www.ebay.co.uk
The nameplate is unreadable but to my inexpert eye it seems to be one of the not-the-first-and-not-the-last G5s. It has a one-piece heatshield, although it looks to be missing the front fans.
Confusingly this listing has a Mac Pro and two G5s, although they're in poor condition. The seller doesn't understand sentences:
1 x Apple PowerMac Pro 2x Power Mac G5 A1186 A1047 A1177 Macintosh Power Mac | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 1 x Apple PowerMac Pro 2x Power Mac G5 A1186 A1047 A1177 Macintosh Power Mac at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!
www.ebay.co.uk
Inevitably his other listings are a mixture of car parts, DJ lights, trainers, TV stands, remote controls etc. And a HP iPAQ, which takes me back.
I find eBay listings depressing. They smell of decay. There comes a point when I have to close the tab and get some air. The photos are always underexposed and the sellers always keep their equipment in a dank shed or piled up in a corner of their living room. The little glimpses of people's lives reminds me of the later Alantutorial videos.
Speaking as a British person, I grew up in an environment where I was told repeatedly that British people were the intellectual cream of the crop and that Americans were stupid, and yet based on the evidence of these eBay listings British people are illiterate junk merchants. And yet a part of me wonders if it's unfair to base my judgement on eBay listings. What if eBay attracts incompetent people? Helena Bonham-Carter is good and pure and she is British. She is not on eBay. If she ever wanted to sell off her old lingerie she would ask Christie's to do it for her, not eBay.
But then again there's a similar thread on GearSlutz called "Ebay sellers on crack + Scammers list" which reveals that Japanese eBayers are just as deluded but their presentation is generally very good and their English is better than actual English people, so perhaps Helena Bonham Carter is an outlier. I picked her just an example. I'm not a stalker. Just going through a person's recycling bins once does not meet the legal definition of stalking.
This man - it could be a woman, but come on - is selling "a Apple MacPro or PowerMac G5 Dual 2Ghz, Quad 2.66Ghz, Quad 3Ghz , Quad 2.8Ghz Quad Core case":
Apple PowerMac G5 MacPro Mac Pro Alluminum case | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Apple PowerMac G5 MacPro Mac Pro Alluminum case at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!
www.ebay.co.uk
It's a Mac Pro case. Good luck fitting a G5 motherboard into it. Not that you'd want to because it's in terrible condition, although confusingly the auction shows two different cases. It might be handy "for those unforeseen replacement needs's that come up in the future".
It's yet another UK eBayer who gives himself a business name, but the photos show a bunch of boxes piled up in the chap's house. I picture a grey-haired, grey-faced old man with angina who has a shed full of rubbish. His business plan consists of trying to con similarly old people out of spending money on rubbish.
Code:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/363142647913Have a look at the second and third picture
Ugh. Smartmedia - the most useless data carrier format. I was given a bridge camera with lenses and all sorts back in the day. Looked fantastic until you tried to get hold of another SM card and they only went up to 128MB max. There was an adapter of sorts but it wasn't self contained and not really usable with the vast majority of devices.
Agreed - CompactFlash FTW. I just got one of these FlashPath thingies. That's (not?) gonna be fun.
Last edited: